It was one of three papers given on a panel chaired by Prof. John O’Neil. It comes from the larger project I’ve been working on for several years now: specifically the fifth chapter which dwells at length on the Tamil I Have Found It: I suggest that Austen’s books lend themselves to contemporary cinema because of her identification as a vulnerable dependent woman and the nature of her stories as well as characters. More narrowly I argue that images of “alienated social identities, de-housed heroines, geographic displacement, resulting epistolarity, and quests for refuge appear as often in heritage as appropriation films.” I include a select bibliography of books on transnational and accented cinema, notes and stills. I couldn’t put on lie the two brief clips I showed: instead I have a series of shots.

2009 Emma: Tamsin Grieg as Miss Bates sending Jane off

2004: Bride and Prejudice: the Bingley characters removed from Jane — even Emma and the gay Punjabi P&P lend themselves to images of exile, displacement

There were two other papers given in this session: Daniel Brewer’s “Screening the Anachronic Sade,” and Moti Gharib Shojanai’s “Kubrick and Kant: Re-framing Enlightenment in Barry Lyndon.” Unfortunately (as often happens when I am giving a paper) I was unable to take notes on the other two papers. Prof Brewer showed how anachronistic and downright misleading Quills was if you are looking for accurate history, but that the film offered a modern vision of today’s world (highly pessimistic, violent) to viewers as well as a sophisticated discourse on the nature of Sade’s compulsion to write. Ms. Shojania’s paper barely mentioned Thackeray’s novel, Barry Lyndon; she took us through the movie in a way which showed how it was about the education of the central character into corruption and despair. You might say it left off where Thackeray’s ironic novel (the narrator, Barry is seen from a stance which recalls Fielding’s Jonathan Wild) begins: we sympathize with Ryan Gosling as Barry as a kind of victim, and again the movie spoke to people today.

I’ve two blogs on these films (part of my study of 18th century film): I see Quills as falling into the genres a horror and period biopic; I wrote about the slowly-moving equisitely set out shots (like paintings) in Barry Lyndon.

It was a well attended session, but the only one on film in the conference.

2002 I Have Found It: Sowmya’s long quest for a job

To pay the rent (our family is threatened with eviction in Madras, the mother sells her jewels for money